Thursday, September 16, 2010

Lynch leads by 12

John Lynch is certainly going to face his toughest contest for reelection since first being elected Governor in New Hampshire, but he still starts out the general election with a solid 51-39 lead over Republican challenger John Stephen.

Lynch was dominant in his 2006 and 2008 wins, receiving large amounts of Republican support and crushing his opponents with independents. Neither of those things will happen this year. Stephen has the GOP base pretty much locked up, 74-13. And Lynch's edge with independents has been reduced to 46-41. Still Lynch wins Democrats 93-4, a larger degree of party unification than we've seen for any candidate in the country this year, and that's more than enough to fuel a double digit lead.

Lynch has a 51% approval rating, making him one of a very small group of Governors and Senators PPP has polled this year who have retained majority support from their constituents. A plurality of voters at 39% still don't know enough about Stephen to have formed an opinion. Among those who have views are pretty evenly divided with 31% seeing him favorably and 30% unfavorably.

In a political year that has produced one surprise after another after another it would be a mistake to completely write off the possibility of an upset. But Lynch's popularity is holding up much better than that of most politicians and if that continues to be true for another 7 weeks he should make it through.

Rasmussen also claimed that John Sununu had suddenly vaulted ten points after the Republican primary in 2008 and was leading Jeanne Shaheen - literally the only pollster the entire race to show Sununu ahead. Then he lost by ten. Rasmussen also gave Rand Paul a twenty-four point lead immediately after the Kentucky primary, then backed it down to single digits a week later. Rasmussen has a terrible record when polling right after primaries.